Communication & Media Studies is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #5 most popular major in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 40 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Communication & Media Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in California ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 6,757 bachelor's degrees in communication & media studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Communication & Media Studies School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of communication & media studies for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on communication & media studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other communication & media studies students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How much debt communication & media studies students go into to obtain their bachelor's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized communication & media studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for communication & media studies students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Communication & Media Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in California ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
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University of Southern California is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. Located in the city of Los Angeles, USC is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Those communication & media studies students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Southern California receive $8,705 more than the average communications graduate.
It is hard to beat University of California - Santa Barbara if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. UCSB is a fairly large public university located in the midsize suburb of Santa Barbara.
Bachelor's recipients from the communication & media studies degree program at University of California - Santa Barbara get $7,652 above the average college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
It's hard to beat University of California - Davis if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. UC Davis is a fairly large public university located in the small suburb of Davis.
Bachelor's recipients from the communication & media studies major at University of California - Davis get $3,623 more than the typical college graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
University of California - Berkeley is a wonderful decision for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in communication & media studies. Located in the medium-sized city of Berkeley, UC Berkeley is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the communication & media studies program at University of California - Berkeley earn $4,750 above the typical college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
SCU is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the midsize city of Santa Clara.
Communication & Media Studies bachelor's degree recipients from Santa Clara University earn a boost of approximately $12,774 above the typical income of communication & media studies graduates.
Located in the medium-sized city of Orange, Chapman is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Those communication & media studies students who get their bachelor's degree from Chapman University receive $5,655 more than the typical communications grad.
Located in the large city of Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.
Those communication & media studies students who get their bachelor's degree from Loyola Marymount University make $2,167 more than the typical communications student.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
Your choice of communication & media studies for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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